e blind" had borne no
other fruit than to strengthen the combinations of moonshiners and their
sympathizers to such a degree that they could set the ordinary force of
officers at defiance, and things had come to such a pass that men of
wide experience in the revenue service had reached the conclusion that
"the fraud of illicit distilling was an evil too firmly established to
be uprooted, and that it must be endured."

The real trouble was that public sentiment in the mountains was almost
unanimously in the moonshiners' favor. Leading citizens were either
directly interested in the traffic, or were in active sympathy with the
distillers. "In some cases," said the Commissioner, "State officers,
including judges on the bench, have sided with the illicit distillers
and have encouraged the use of the State courts for the prosecution of
the officers of the United States upon all sorts of charges, with the
evident purpose of obstructing the enforcement of the laws of the United
States.... I regret to have to record the fact that when the officers of
the United States have been shot down from ambuscade, in cold blood, as
a rule no efforts have been made on the part of the State officers to
arrest the murderers; but in cases where the officers of the United
States have been engaged in enforcement of the laws, and have
unfortunately come in conflict with the violators of the law, and
homicides have occurred, active steps have been at once taken for the
arrest of such officers, and nothing would be left undone by the State
authorities to bring them to trial and punishment."

There is no question but that this statement of the Commissioner was a
fair presentation of facts; but when he went on to expose the root of
the evil, the underlying sentiment that made, and still makes, illicit
distilling popular among our mountaineers, I think that he was
singularly at fault. This was his explanation--the only one that I have
found in all the reports of the Department from 1870 to 1904:

"Much of the opposition to the enforcement of the internal revenue laws
[he does not say _all_, but offers no other theory] is properly
attributable to a latent feeling of hostility to the government and laws
of the United States still prevailing in the breasts of a portion of the
people of these districts, and in consequence of this condition of
things the officers of the United States have often been treated very
much as though they were emissaries from